Chapter 3
Freyja lay in bed. She felt quietly revitalised. And slightly cold.
She pulled the covers around her, they swallowed her like a red and gold ocean, and she tried to remember what was going on....
It was Ragnarok.
That was it. The world was ending, and she was lying here in bed, unable to do anything about it. Thoughts danced around her head, mockingly, as she was unable to catch up with them. She reached out and grabbed one. It wriggled and tried to escape her grasp.
What did it say? She looked closer.
“Thor”.
Her heart began to melt and she suddenly remembered what had happened.
She spun around in bed.
Like a large, golden statue, Thor lay there, sleeping, unperturbed by her sudden movement. She allowed herself to smile, a private, slightly sad, smile. She watched his chest bob up and down with each breath, hoping and praying it would do so forever.
The more she watched, the less real he seemed. Too good to be true. A character thought up one dark winter night in an effort to explain thunderstorms to a frightened child.
But if that was all he was, surely, the same applied to her?
It couldn't. She had been human before. Even if all of Asgard ceased to exist, she would still be a corpse, out there, somewhere. As real as the nose on your face. But Thor would just... go. Disappear. Be lost to the ages.
She closed her eyes, and enjoyed the peace, ignored the uncertainty as well as the unwelcome certainty that now plagued their lives.
Death. That was certain. Too certain for Freyja's liking.
One thing was sure. She was going to enjoy every last minute she and Thor had together. Thor had shown her the time of her life before she died, it was time for her to return the favour.
“For as long as we both shall live.” the voice in her head piped up.
Freyja's emotions were not expecting this last remark, and tears began to roll down her cheeks.
How could love be so wonderful yet so painful at the same time?
This almost confirmed a similar theory to that in which it is said that for every moment of tenderness experienced, somewhere else in the universe, a simultaneous unfortunate moment is experienced by somebody else.
It was as if the Universe could only give out a certain amount of joy at any one time, so for an even balance, it created love. Something that could just as easily give life as take it away. Something that could put you on the top of the world, or drop you down an emotional well with no escape.
On a whim, she leaned over, and examined his face. He looked as if he had been poured and moulded out of white gold. He almost gleamed and shimmered in the evening light. She tried to imagine waking up to an empty space where he lay, but couldn't, or wouldn't; she wasn't sure which.
She reached out and stroked his cheek. He stirred and woke up, shattering his statuesque pose.
“Freyja? Are you all right?” he mumbled.
He too reached out and wiped a tear from her cheek.
“I'm fine.” she sniffed, although this was one of the biggest lies she had ever told (the biggest being the time she told her teacher that she had killed one of her classmates in a dispute over some Lego when she was in pre-school).
“No, you're not.”
More tears joined in the party on her cheeks, as they had been feeling left out.
“I'm sorry...” she choked.
He wrapped his golden arms around her, and held her close.
“Don't cry, don't cry...” he said, softly, cradling her like a baby.
She made an effort not to cry, but his presence and their being together this way just made it worse.
“I don't want you to die.” she sobbed, burying her head in his chest.
She wasn't sure if he heard her, but he began mumbling things in Old Norse, and even though Freyja didn't fully understand, these strange sounds seemed to comfort her.
She needed to pull herself together, and stop burying Thor before the battle had even begun.
That day, Thor left Freyja alone, wanting to practice some moves for the battle. In an instant she fled upstairs, to her wardrobe.
Freyja had one secret that she kept from everyone. Her own mother barely knew about it.
When she had left Midgard for good, she had kept a box of her 21st century prized belongings. It consisted of her laptop, her phone, (she had managed to convince her mother that there was an electric grid in Asgard, and a socket in her room, thus making it so), some books and her pocket telescope. She hid it in the back of her wardrobe, behind her more lavish dresses, where no-one would ever find it.
She hadn't needed to go to it often, only when she was feeling particularly homesick; and right now, she didn't want to feel a part of Asgard. Despite the fact she couldn't get back to the Midgard she knew, she would have to try the next best thing. Memories.
She pulled the box out, and held her books. In Asgard they were all written in Old Norse, in runes, which Freyja had yet to understand. Reading plain English seemed almost frivolous. She felt it was almost wrong to be able to decipher letters on a page.
It was certainly kinder to her eyes.
She dug out her telescope. It still seemed so wrong for the stars here to be in the wrong place, or to be just... Different from the stars on Midgard.
No. Not Midgard. Earth.
The little blue planet hurtling around a sun in a vastly bigger Universe, created by a Big Bang, built of atoms and molecules... Home.
She missed it. She had taken it for granted at the time, as everyone does, but now it meant so much to her. It was her past, and the future that would never be.
She had wasted so many years in school, trying to build herself up to be something great; among men, at least. What was the point in it all if you were just going to chuck it away?
Although, how many people are secretly gods on the inside?
Perhaps a little perspective was necessary.
So, she'd lost near enough eleven years to school, but now she was immortal, and could more than compensate for eleven lost years.
But what about her dreams? Everything she was going to be?
An astrophysicist. That was her ultimate goal. Although she had always been torn between being a career woman or a housewife and mother. Looks like that decision had been made.
But that didn't mean she was going to give up one for the other. She could do both...
How does one continue one's studies when one is living in a culture that thinks the first people came from a giant's armpit?
She shoved the box back into it's hiding place, and heard a chink of glass as it hit the back wall. Freyja was very sure that she didn't keep any glass in the same place as her clothes. She stepped inside, moving her dresses aside, half expecting to find a faun and a lamppost on the other side.
There was a wooden wall at the back of the wardrobe. She ran her fingers down it, following the grain, until her hand struck something cold and metal.
It was a handle. Letting curiosity get the better of her, she pulled it. It was stuck. She pulled again.
It wouldn't budge.
Her hand slid further down the door, and she found her problem. There was a keyhole below the handle. It looked made for a particularly large key, nearly as thick as her little finger. In the half-light, Freyja could tell that the lock was made of an orangey metal.
She heard footsteps come up the back passage to the bedroom, and she hurried out of the wardrobe, dragging several dresses with her. She toppled onto the floor buried under layers of fabric.
The door opened.
Thor's head peeped a little nervously into the room. As he caught sight of her he held in a laugh, and coughed awkwardly.
“Is everything OK?” he asked.
She joined him picking up the dresses.
He looked sceptically at the clothes and raised an eyebrow.
“May I ask, why were you under these dresses when I came in?” he ques
tioned.
“Have you ever seen a bronze key, about the size of my little finger?” she replied quickly.
“What's that got to do with the price of fish? Why are your dresses on the floor?”
“Spring cleaning.” she snapped, “Ever seen a key like that?”
“No! And why is it so important?”
He looked genuinely baffled, Freyja decided to drop the subject.
“Never mind.”
She hung her dresses back up.
“What's the matter with you tonight? You're acting really... Odd.”
“Nothing. I'm just... Tired. That's all.”
Thor looked her up and down. Everything seemed to be where it should be, she didn't look pale or anything... But something wasn't right.
“Do you want to go to bed?” he asked.
She hung up the last of her dresses.
“Um... Yeah, good idea.”
She spun around, trying to remember where the bedroom door was. Her head was suddenly full of questions about the wardrobe, and the key.
“Door's there.” he gestured.
Freyja blushed and walked through it smartly.
Chapter 4
As Freyja lay in bed, an icy chill went down her back. She glanced out of the window, it was nearly dawn. Thor continued to snore peacefully next to her.
She had a sinking sensation in her stomach. Something big was about to happen. And not necessarily something good.
Her covers seemed to weigh her down, choke her. The air drained from the room and she threw her sheets off.
Thor barely stirred, even though Freyja began to fidget, trying to get comfy, trying to clear her head and her chest. She had heard of a female intuition, but she had always presumed it was a rather discreet sensation, like a gentle pat on the back when your friend bumps into you at the supermarket. This was more like a full frontal slap in